howl
by TaoGrace
Summary: nesta dreams of drowning. post-acomaf. cross-posted on ao3


It's anger. Anger makes her world go round and round and round. Makes it spiral in bottomless pits of darkness and she can't smell, can't sense, can't see, can't breathe and she implodes at the end of the world and explodes at its birth and rebirth and repeat and she's drowning, drowning, drowning.

Nesta wakes screaming.

.

It's a blur. A colourful haze. She is barefoot and the floors are marble and Nesta has never seen them before. There's a breeze, a gust of wind making her hair float around her, tangled in golden hoops. She doesn't know where it comes from, or where it goes, but she follows in its wake. One step and then another, and waves of silk trailing behind her calves.

She still feels nothing.

Nesta walks and walks, stumbling, but not falling, toes curling around dirt and stone and grass, when she lifts her chin from her chest.

She is in the clouds.

It is cold and humid and what must be an embroidered silken shift is clinging to her arms and back and chest. She inhales, sharply, the cold air stabbing her lungs. A twitch in her mind, a phantom memory, and she feels water, water everywhere, salt and tears and blood, death made fluid and she chokes and then it clicks and

 _Elain._

She clutches at her neck, long nails digging in soft flesh and she remembers her sister, golden curls pushed in the abyss and a teary screech and a gurgling sound as she dies-

 _But the scream is mine_ , a distant, calm part of her rationalises, and she hears herself scream Elain's name again and again, as if the clouds and the rocks and the mist could make her materialise out of nothing.

Nesta must be turning round and round, and her voice is cracking and _Elain, where is Elain, where is my sister_ and for a moment, she sees pyrite locks and two pairs of blue eyes, but they're blind and dead, and their skin is imbibed parchment and wax and her sisters lay there, both of them, sprawled and unseeing and unfeeling, _gone_.

She thinks her voice might be gone, when she notices him.

 _Him_.

Wide eyes stare at her and a gust of wind blasts them by, ruffling their hair, curling dark strands around his ears and jaw, but his eyes are dark and his tears are frozen against his cheeks as he opens that mouth and

" _What happened, why are you here, who-_

and her head implodes. A thousand images rush in, destroying her sense and her perception, but she tugs on a picture - a charming devil with honesty dripping from his teeth like venom, an oath, like a kiss, leaving his lips and branding her skin and the beat of her heart, an oath, a promise, sealed in her name

 _Nesta Archeron_ , the sky seemed to moan, and the pair of them hears it.

Her eyes are painfully wide as they meet his, and much like death had before, anger floods her senses now - a flaring pain, a burning desire to rip and destroy and end.

 _You promised me_! she means to howl and the tremble in his jaw makes her think she might have already done so, but she's not certain, not certain of anything beyond the anger and the grief, so she hauls and throws herself against him, screaming and screeching like a banshee, fingers clawing at his face.

Nesta tackles him, and she expects resistance, expects to be thrown back and bathed in blood , but there is nothing, _nothing_ , there is no defense, no sound of pain, just a fraction of shock and the emptiness in his hollow eyes and it's _more than she can take_

So she punches him and it shouldn't matter, nothing should, her five fingers curling into a small fist don't mean anything, have never meant anything, not when she was drowning, not when Elain was drowning in a sea of madness.

And yet they do. Short, slim fingers scrunched together like so should break in a thousand pieces, shatter and never see the light of day again. Except they don't.

Except they come alive, alive in an explosion of light or darkness or something Nesta cannot place and the general, that idiot with a broken smile etched in his features gasps for air as he is thrown in the stone wall some few metres behind him.

Dust and sand dance in bleary, muted sunlight, as the stone cracks, and Nesta remains still as a statue, hand outstretched before her and disbelief in the curl of her mouth and the whites of her eyes. For a moment, Cassian stares at her, then his body spasms and he drops to his knees, panting heavily as his arms go around himself.

 _The wings at his back_ , she thinks through the haze, and it strikes her like a bath of ice. His wings are no longer there. She looks at him, _looks_ at him as if for the first time, and realises that bandages peek under his shirt and he didn't take off as soon as he saw her and he's trembling whole as his fingers reach around his torso to his back and he is barely holding himself together and Mother above, his wings, his wings, his wings are gone.

Before she knows what she's doing, before her mind can understand that it's all, they're all drowning in a sea of pain, Nesta finds herself before him. It's as if she's looking at herself, disconnected and aloft, not truly living, not truly seeing or feeling, but then he's so small at her feet, this big monster of a man or of a fae or what in the Mother's - _Cauldron's, Cauldron's, Cauldron'_ s name he is and suddenly she's back in the deep, dead sea, and it's dark and she's terrified and her skin is burning, her bones are simmering through it and it hurts and she's falling to her knees as a sob breaks through from her chest and she wants to hide her head between her knees and claw at her skin and pull out her hair, because this isn't her, this isn't real, she's not Nesta, she's not a girl anymore, she's lost and cold and dead and now the sobs flow freely as energy crackles at the tips of her fingers and singes the fistfuls of hair she's clutching.

Only there's, there's a pair of hands, feverish and yet cold, clammy from sweat and hard with callouses. Big hands, with long, strong fingers and yet they are so gentle Nesta's heart could break as they detangle her fists from her hair, gingerly taking a finger, going over a scratched knuckle, and then another and another and another until her hands, her cold, hands, blistering with something foreign and fearsome, something coursing through her like lightning, are softly held, and these clammy fingers quietly tangle with hers and two pairs of hands touch her face, the sides of her jaw, caress her hair until she's looking up at a pale face and she hiccups between the tears.

Nesta does not know where these tears come from, if they are real, or if they are a part of the sea that drowned her. She only knows that a pair of dark, haunted eyes, hidden above dark purple circles and gaunt cheekbones, is staring at her, and she remembers screams, and darkness, and _Elain, Mother in Heaven, Elain screaming as she dies, as they kill her. She feels pain, pain the likes of which oughtn't exist, pain in her lungs and beyond, pain at her back, excruciating pain and then she's there, in the darkness, pushed into the void, into hell into death_ and Nesta is screaming as these dark eyes fill to the brim and arms go around her, pulling her in a trembling embrace.

And although the strength in them is nothing but some sort of cursed ghost, these arms hold her – he holds her tightly as she cries and cries and screams herself hoarse, and before she can remember, _remember and relive_ Elain's death and cries and pleas, Nesta burrows her nose in the rough crook of his neck and closes her eyes and offers herself to the darkness.

* * *

 **A/N: hullo:D nessian angst, because ican. and because elnabu is the devil incarnate, making me drown in feels. do leave me a word or thought, lemme think how you found this bit :3**

 **(vaguely inappropriate given the situation) cheers**


End file.
